IN her letter (Irish Examiner, April 20), Laura
Burke of Indaver is indeed correct in stating that the company used
the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines in selecting its site
at Ringaskiddy for a proposed hazardous waste incinerator.What she
did not explain is that the WHO guidelines were applied by Indaver
only after Ringaskiddy had already been decided as the most suitable
location for this national facility.

The WHO takes a remarkably balanced approach
to incineration. It recognises its benefits, while cautioning of its
potential health and environmental effects.

These, it advises, can be minimised by appropriate
emissions control equipment and proper siting. The guidelines mentioned
by Ms Burke were designed to assist with the latter.

The first step in applying the WHO guidelines
is to rule out certain areas from the site selection process where
exposed populations could be at particular risk from either routine
or non-routine emissions.

Such areas include those prone to regular thermal
inversions. In a thermal inversion, atmospheric conditions become
so stable that the air is virtually motionless and emissions are trapped
close to the ground. As anyone familiar with the area can confirm,
Cork Harbour experiences regular thermal inversions. Had Indaver gone
no further than applying this very first step of the WHO guidelines,
nowhere in Cork Harbour would have even been considered, let alone
shortlisted, for its proposed incinerator. Indaver contends that because
comprehensive modelling presented within the environmental impact
statement (EIS) predicts no detrimental impact from emissions, the
WHO guidelines are upheld. This is the EIS commissioned only after
Indaver had already purchased its favoured site at Ringaskiddy. This
is the modelling that relied on climatic input data taken from the
top of a hill at Cork airport.

Yet for every one thermal inversion experienced
at Cork airport, 25 thermal inversions are experienced in the Cork
Harbour valley. This is the model that assumes vertical rise of the
plume from Indaver’s proposed facility. Yet in a thermal inversion,
vertical rise is impossible. This is the facility for which emissions
from major accidents were predicted as being non-problematic. Yet
these predictions were made using a model incapable of dealing with
thermal inversions and accurate only for flat terrain. Ms Burke is
correct in saying that there will “never be a perfect site”
for a facility such as that proposed by Indaver for Ringaskiddy.

But by employing such site selection procedures,
Indaver has angered even those who might otherwise be supportive of
its project. It does not take a “team of engineers” to
identify Cork Harbour as one of the basic no-go areas under WHO guidelines.
But this team is remarkably useful in confounding with inaccurate
science what would otherwise be a simple observation.